212. The power of pain

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass 2017

In previous years I've literally limped out of the park at the end of my Sunday shift at HSB, totally spent, but not this year. In sports, this would be called "peaking at the right time." My back, wrist, and all my various body-parts were perfect at the crucial moment and I could have worked longer if I hadn't run out of bags and if idiots weren't taking apart the area where I was trying to work. I can't even explain how my feet were so much better than normal at the end of 27 hours of working hard on uneven ground.

Take that being-a-senior-citizen!

As I expected, things did not go according to plan -- always a safe bet. The new Arrow vendor row -- on the opposite side of Hellman Hollow (Speedway Meadow) where the Arrow Stage was in previous years -- was both smaller and more contained. Aside from a lack of shade, it was easier to work than the old location... until the end. 

The only act I always catch is Emmylou Harris's final set on the Banjo Stage. I take care of as many stations at the back of that crowd as I can handle -- this time just one as I couldn't see any others in the crowd. By the time I returned to my vendors, they had filled my well-ordered compost cans with way more compost than anyone could deal with and, to make things really interesting, they were in the process of taking the whole area apart -- something that previously didn't happen until the following day. 

I had to create order in trashed stations and sort the usual black vendor bags, while the stations themselves were either blocked or being shifted around. If I hadn't run out of bags, I would have stayed even longer than I did, but between the lack of bags and being unable to get to some of our cans, I finally just gave up and went home. Still, I think I got all the vendor bags -- though there may have been some in areas I couldn't get to -- and I did the best I could with the huge volume of heavy, high quality compost the vendors left behind as they shut down.

If it had gone any better, I would have been suspicious, so I can't complain -- despite the complaining and suggestions-for-next-year emails I've already sent out.

But where, you ask, does "the power of pain" come in? As I said, I felt great last night after I arrived home and, was a little stiff, but otherwise still surprisingly good when I got up this morning. None-the-less, I got my ass up and went to the gym this morning for an abbreviated session. The year old memory of my double hamstring cramp from the Monday after HSB last year was sufficiently motivating to get me to the gym even though I felt fine and was taking a bunch of other steps to avoid cramps. 

And here's the show and tell:

Our HQ between my food vendor area and Banjo Stage with a smaller eco-station in the foreground and my boss, the Mary in Green Mary, in the background:

"My" compost dumpster Before:

Same dumpster at 4pm on Sunday, with three hours of concert and more hours of dumping still to come:

The before of the recycling dumpster: 

Again, the After at 4pm on Sunday. Note the comparatively empty landfill in the background. This is why we do what we do:

(This is one of our two smaller dumpster locations. I pestered Mary until she finally went along and got the event to go along as well. Previously, all this waste would have been hauled much further away in golf carts and truck to our main dumpster/sorting location at the stables. This saves a huge amount of time and some gas.)

Emmylou Harris on stage at the end of the festival. The face in the center of the backdrop is Warren Hellman who started and funded the festival:

My view from the back of the crowd with some of our compost cans in the foreground:

I wanted to get the last of the sun at the top of the trees, but my station got busy and I missed it. This was the last shot I took:

HSB related...

The Arming Scene

I've written before about the scene in action films (like Predator 2) and possibly originating in The Odyssey, where the hero puts on his armor and gathers his weapons. (There are similar scenes in The Iliad, but I like the one with Odysseus the best.) It occurred to me as I dressed for day one of HSB that I have my own little arming scene. Here's how it goes.

The evening before I lay out my cargo pants and fill the pockets with the personal items and gear I will need for my work. Now that I'm carrying a backpack, most things go there, including spare rolls of bags, marking pens, energy bars, 1st aid supplies, my headlamp, and camera. I still put my work gloves and water bottle in my cargo pockets. 

I also assemble my hat, picker-stick, lifting belt, and the Green Mary t-shirt I wear over my long-sleeved undershirt. And I write out any notes I need for the event -- who's the crew chief, where we are to meet, any transit notes including a time schedule for when I have to leave to arrive on time.

The next morning I apply sunscreen (magical ointment as protection against Apollo, the Sun god) then put on my UPF 50 Apollo resistant undershirt (I only have two of these so I went with a thicker cotton shirt on what was supposed to be the coolest day of HSB), my thin under-socks and heavy outer socks, and then put on my cargo pants, one leg at a time. Then I put on my heavy work boots -- because I knew I would be working on uneven ground, for this event I laced them all the way up for extra support -- before putting on the lifting-belt and then the Green Mary t-shirt on top.

Finally I put on my UPF 50, wide-brimmed hat and firmly grab my tool... I mean my picker-stick. Thus equipped I go forth to sort and haul and dump.


Not for the first time, I'm almost certain, on Saturday -- the busiest day on the Speedway Meadow portion of HSB -- I noticed a similarity between managing our Greening operation and fighting a battle. It is so satisfying when you are busy doing something else and you suddenly get this visceral understanding of military strategy, relevant to most any era and region. I'm going to start with the military version and return to the Greening.

Napoleon lived and died by this strategy and usually it worked for him -- this is one of the things Tolstoy found incomprehensible in War and Peace. But I'm going to take the instance I know best (this one didn't work either, but it almost did) Gettysburg in the American Civil War. First you attack on a flank, in this instance the Union right flank. The enemy is forced to reinforce that flank to prevent a breakthrough. Next you attack on the left flank forcing the enemy to throw in even more reserves and even shift units over from the center. Finally, you launch your main assault at the center where the enemy is weakened, and after most of his reserves are committed elsewhere.

At HSB, besides Speedway Meadow, where I always work, there are additional stages in Marx Meadow and in Lindley Meadow. Mid-afternoon on Saturday we started getting calls for help from Lindley and sent some people over to help. Mary would be an awful general as she over-reacts to any situation like this, but in this case she was already off and it was other people who left us with very few people on hand when the crowd surged back in our direction at the end of the day. I had to leave my vendors unattended (like leaving toddlers alone with balloons filled with gasoline and a bunch of lighters) and go out on the field to keep the stations near the food from overflowing. My constant whining about how great the large, blue recycling toters lined with heavy bags were for dealing with situations just like this, payed off this year as we had these all over the field. 

It takes a great deal to fill one of these toters, and even when that happens one person (me) can dump out about half the contents into one of these spare bags to keep the station functioning. (You can even sort out the compost and landfill at the same time so you end up with a fairly clean bag of recycling next to a fairly clean toter, or two toters since they are usually paired and I can dump twice into the same bag.) This method worked perfectly on Saturday. But back to my analogy...

In our case we are not opposing an enemy general but, in the HSB case, the person who scheduled the events on the various stages. It is very easy to end up playing whack-a-mole with crowds that shift from stage to stage, meadow to meadow. And anyway, the worst that can happen is that some eco-stations over-flow for a period of time until someone can get to them. We would rather this didn't happen, but it's also inevitable when the crowd gets to a certain density, regardless of staffing.

But as I watched (listened) to this developing on Saturday, I could completely understand the over reaction of a general being attacked by Napoleon. In the heat of the moment you are trying to be strong everywhere and end up being weak at the critical point. 

Meade, at Gettysburg, had the advantage of a numerically larger army that was still arriving at the battlefield so he could keep sending new units in to fill in the gaps in his line. 


My favorite sight of the festival
In that crowd watching Emmylou Harris, a man walked past me carrying, or rather embracing, a dog. The dog was a Beagle and they were chest to chest, face to face. The Beagle and I locked eyes as they went past and seemed to communicate "Don't judge us" -- instead of the "I wouldn't mind eating whatever you have in that bag" I usually get from dogs when I'm working.